Sebastian Barry — The Newer World - with Marie Arana

Sebastian Barry presents *The Newer World*, a sweeping historical novel about Tennyson Bouguereau, a formerly enslaved man in post–Civil War Tennessee. After a violent encounter with defeated Confederate soldiers, Tennyson is forced to abandon the future he had hoped to build with his sister, Rosalee, and set out into an unfamiliar America. The novel follows his journey through a rapidly changing mid-19th-century landscape, including a Nashville choir school and an army camp in New Mexico, while exploring survival, displacement, and the losses that accompany freedom.

Barry will discuss the book with Marie Arana, former editor in chief of *The Washington Post*’s Book World and now a writer at large for the paper and a member of the Library of Congress Scholars Council. Barry is an Irish novelist and playwright, the author of nine previous novels, a two-time Costa Book of the Year winner, and a former Laureate for Irish Fiction. Arana is the author of the memoir *American Chica* and editor of *The Writing Life: How Writers Think and Work*.

When: Thursday, September 24, 2026

Showtime: 7:00 p.m.

Venue: Politics and Prose at Union Market, 1324 4th Street NE, Washington, DC 20002

Participants: Sebastian Barry, in conversation with Marie Arana

Tickets: Free

Seating: First come, first served

Accessibility: To request accommodations or ask about accessibility, email events@politics-prose.com, ideally at least one week before the event. The organizers will make an effort to accommodate requests received up to the event time.

Related book: *The Newer World: A Novel* by Sebastian Barry, a hardcover published September 15, 2026, is listed at $28.00. Its ISBN is 9780593654613.